The school department will close out a number of recent school facilities repair projects by returning $115,732 in unspent warrant article funds to town coffers or paying down town debt, School Superintendent Tom Jefferson told the school board at its May 14 meeting. Of the six projects that came in under budget, two were for the elementary school, one was for Bromfield House, and three were for repairs to Bromfield School.
The repairs to the walls of Bromfield’s middle school wing, budgeted at $140,000, turned out to cost much less; $51,500 of those funds will be returned to the stabilization fund. Fixing Bromfield’s heating system will cost just under half of the $34,000 voted for the project, so the school department will return unspent funds of $17,399, also to the stabilization fund. Bromfield School’s roof repair, budgeted at $1.3 million, will end up with about $10,000 left over. Because those funds were borrowed, that extra money will be applied to pay down town debt.
The other three projects were paid for with raised and appropriated tax dollars, so those unused funds will return to the town’s general fund and show up in free cash at the end of the fiscal year in June. Harvard approved $40,000 for window repairs and the painting of Bromfield House, but spent less than half that much because it used prison labor, leaving $23,191 to be returned to the town. Another $40,000 was voted for reconfiguring and resurfacing the elementary school parking lot, but the project came in $11,832 under budget. Finally, the schools had $1,810 left from the $25,000 slated to fix bathrooms in the kindergarten wing.
The largest recent school building project, the $17.6 million Bromfield expansion and renovation project from 2003, still has $52,901 in unspent money. However, the schools plan to use that sum to pay for items that were originally part of the project but put on hold until the schools knew enough money would be available, Jefferson said. The schools plan to use $25,000 to upgrade the computers in the Bromfield graphics lab and move the old graphics computers to other classrooms. In addition, $14,000 will go toward a cart with enough laptops to allow for a mobile computer lab that can be wheeled from classroom to classroom as needed. Another $5,000 will pay for trash barrels and benches for Bromfield hallways, $3,000 will be used to purchase computer software, and $3,000 will be used to paint several halls, according to Jefferson.
